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What is the hexagon on saturn? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:07
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, if aliens arrived to our solar system, do
0:11
Speaker 1: you think they would know that we were here on
0:13
Speaker 1: Earth before they landed? Like, could they tell from far away? Well,
0:16
Speaker 1: I don't know. You think they're broadcasting episodes of our podcast.
0:19
Speaker 1: Maybe they'd hear one. I'm not sure they would conclude
0:23
Speaker 1: that we're that intelligent if they got this podcast, but well,
0:26
Speaker 1: they'd hear that we love asking questions. I don't know.
0:29
Speaker 1: I guess if they know they can't close enough to
0:31
Speaker 1: Earth to see the surface but not see people, they
0:33
Speaker 1: could probably see all sorts of weird geometric structures, you know,
0:37
Speaker 1: circles from farming and cities and grids and stuff that
0:39
Speaker 1: you just don't see in nature, like straight lines and
0:42
Speaker 1: squares and perfect circles. Yeah, the kind of stuff you
0:46
Speaker 1: don't see like coming naturally out of a forest or
0:48
Speaker 1: some totally wild environment, like like a holiday in from
0:51
Speaker 1: above exactly, Well, you don't see spontaneous holiday inns farming
0:55
Speaker 1: in jungles. Right. Hi. I'm Morey. I'm a cartoonist and
1:14
Speaker 1: the creator of PhD Comics. And I'm Daniel. I'm a
1:17
Speaker 1: particle physicist, and I like asking questions about the universe.
1:20
Speaker 1: Wondering about weird stuff and planning to collaborate with other
1:24
Speaker 1: species against the for the downfall of humanity. And that's
1:27
Speaker 1: perfect because I like drawing aliens and question marks. That's right.
1:31
Speaker 1: That's why we make such a great team. Exactly. I
1:33
Speaker 1: commit the crimes and you draw them, but I make
1:35
Speaker 1: them funny and with sound effects. That's right. At my
1:39
Speaker 1: trial for treason against humanity, I want you to be
1:42
Speaker 1: the sort of court reporter that's drawing me sympathetically. Oh yeah,
1:45
Speaker 1: I'll be there. I'll be drawing the mental map of
1:47
Speaker 1: your guilty argumentation. But before that, you can see a
1:52
Speaker 1: sample of our work because we wrote a book together
1:54
Speaker 1: about questions about the universe. It's called We Have No Idea,
1:57
Speaker 1: A Guide to the Unknown Universe. Yeah. It's full of awesome,
2:01
Speaker 1: interesting questions about the universe and also cartoons, so check
2:05
Speaker 1: it out. That's right. But today you're listening to our podcast,
2:08
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
2:11
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. That's right, And here's where we sit down
2:14
Speaker 1: and chew on one particular question. Every episode, we try
2:17
Speaker 1: to find something weird, something strange, something that you'd like
2:20
Speaker 1: to hear discussed in more depth than you can just
2:23
Speaker 1: google and break it down for you. Yeah, all kinds
2:25
Speaker 1: of weird things out there in the universe and other
2:28
Speaker 1: planets in the smallest of scales, things that are circular, square, spinning,
2:33
Speaker 1: maybe even hexagonal. That's right. We like all kinds of questions,
2:37
Speaker 1: two sided, four sided, even six sided questions. So today
2:40
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be talking about a pretty interesting
2:43
Speaker 1: mystery right here in our solar system. I think even
2:47
Speaker 1: pretty interesting is under selling it. I think it's flabbergasting.
2:50
Speaker 1: When I first heard about this, I thought, whoa, that's
2:53
Speaker 1: probably aliens. You were flabbergasted, That's right. All of my
2:58
Speaker 1: flabbers were totally gasted by this concept. I don't even
3:02
Speaker 1: know what that means, but it sounds like you're amazed.
3:05
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm trying to reduce the number of
3:07
Speaker 1: flappers I have, actually, um as I get older. But yeah,
3:10
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing that it's sort of
3:12
Speaker 1: a modern question because it's the kind of question that arises. Um.
3:15
Speaker 1: The more we can see things, you know, the more
3:17
Speaker 1: we look out into the universe, the more we see
3:20
Speaker 1: stuff that we didn't expect, which is exactly why we
3:23
Speaker 1: do look out into the universe to get those surprises. Yeah,
3:27
Speaker 1: to get more data points about how the universe works, right,
3:30
Speaker 1: because so far we can only mostly look around where
3:34
Speaker 1: we are here on Earth. That's right. And I think
3:35
Speaker 1: early humans thought, hey, look, this is the Earth, this
3:38
Speaker 1: is the universe. Everything else is just details or supporting
3:41
Speaker 1: cast right. And as we learn more and more about
3:43
Speaker 1: our role in the universe, we learned that the universe
3:45
Speaker 1: is huge. And but you might be tempted to do
3:47
Speaker 1: extrapolate and said, well, maybe the rest of the universe
3:50
Speaker 1: is just filled with Earth's also, right. But the more
3:52
Speaker 1: we look out, the more we learn that the Earth
3:54
Speaker 1: is weird, it's strange, it's it's unusual. There are just
3:58
Speaker 1: in our Solar system. There are no other plan It's
4:00
Speaker 1: like the Earth. Yeah, it's strangely not hexagonal. That's right.
4:05
Speaker 1: That's right. So maybe you should stop teasing folks and
4:07
Speaker 1: tell them exactly what we're talking about today. Yeah, So
4:11
Speaker 1: to be on the program, we'll be talking a really
4:14
Speaker 1: big mystery in our solar system. We'll be talking about
4:22
Speaker 1: what is Saturn's hexagon? That's right. And you might be thinking,
4:25
Speaker 1: what Saturn has a hexagon? What does that even mean?
4:27
Speaker 1: Does they have like a toy it plays with or something. Yeah.
4:30
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to admit I had no idea
4:32
Speaker 1: what this was before you send me the notes for
4:34
Speaker 1: this episode. Yeah, well it's incredible. I mean I thought
4:37
Speaker 1: Saturn had like an octagon or a you know, pentagon,
4:41
Speaker 1: but not a hexagon. That sounds somehow more sinister, right,
4:45
Speaker 1: Like octagon and pentagon sound like they involved in some
4:48
Speaker 1: devious scheme or something. But a hexagon, I guess the
4:50
Speaker 1: hexagon is more benign. Yeah, I think so. I mean,
4:53
Speaker 1: there's something nice about the number six. But I love
4:56
Speaker 1: this topic and we'll dig into the details of it.
4:57
Speaker 1: Sort of. The broader sense of it is is learning
5:00
Speaker 1: about the other stuff that goes out there, you know,
5:03
Speaker 1: like the more we discover other planets and and other
5:06
Speaker 1: systems and more we learn that stuff here on Earth
5:08
Speaker 1: is kind of I don't know, sedate, you know, like
5:11
Speaker 1: the biggest mountains in the Solar System not here on Earth,
5:14
Speaker 1: the highest temperatures in the Solar System, not here on Earth,
5:17
Speaker 1: the deepest valleys not here on Earth. Right, the weirdest
5:20
Speaker 1: stuff in the Solar System is not here, And our
5:22
Speaker 1: things here on Earth are kind of I don't know,
5:24
Speaker 1: calm and and uh and easy going compared to the
5:27
Speaker 1: extremes we find elsewhere in the just in our solar system.
5:30
Speaker 1: You're saying, Earth is like the key west of the
5:32
Speaker 1: solar system, you know, calm weather. Yeah, exactly. Imagine you
5:36
Speaker 1: were a civilization that like, you know, formed in in
5:40
Speaker 1: the southern Florida or something where along the equator, and
5:43
Speaker 1: you imagine the whole Earth was like that, and then
5:45
Speaker 1: you traveled north and like learned about snow and stuff
5:47
Speaker 1: like that. You be like, whoa, this is crazy. Why
5:50
Speaker 1: do people even live here? That's what I think of
5:52
Speaker 1: the North All. That's when I think of every time
5:56
Speaker 1: I go to Chicago, I'm like, I love this town,
5:59
Speaker 1: but why is it here? Seriously, Like this town should
6:01
Speaker 1: be on the west coast. So yeah, So Saturn has
6:04
Speaker 1: a hexagon. And so if you've never heard of this before,
6:07
Speaker 1: and you are a at a computer maybe or on
6:10
Speaker 1: your phone on the subway or or the or the train, um,
6:13
Speaker 1: just take a second and just google image. Google search
6:16
Speaker 1: for Saturn hexagon. I think your mind will be blown
6:19
Speaker 1: when you see the images that come up. That's right,
6:21
Speaker 1: all of your flabbers will be gassed. And for those
6:24
Speaker 1: of you who don't have a screen in front of you,
6:27
Speaker 1: and and we don't want you to pick up your
6:28
Speaker 1: phone and while you're driving and start typing this into Google.
6:32
Speaker 1: We can describe it for you briefly. Basically, if you
6:34
Speaker 1: look at the top of Saturn, there is an enormous
6:37
Speaker 1: cloud pattern in the shape of a hexagon. And it's
6:40
Speaker 1: not like, no, that's not really hexagon. I mean you
6:43
Speaker 1: look at this thing and you think, whoa, that's a hexagon.
6:45
Speaker 1: It's a storm, and it looks at different color than
6:48
Speaker 1: the rest of the planet, and the outline of it
6:51
Speaker 1: looks like a perfect hexagon. It's not like a weird
6:54
Speaker 1: blob with six sides of different sizes. It's like a
6:57
Speaker 1: perfect hexagon. Yeah, I think perfect. My stretching it a
7:00
Speaker 1: little bit, but it's definitely hexagonal. Right, It's not like
7:03
Speaker 1: a circle with suggestions a little hint of hexagons. It's
7:07
Speaker 1: like a slightly rounded hexagon. It's it's pretty strange and
7:11
Speaker 1: it's big. It's sort of it's sort of like a
7:13
Speaker 1: hat on Saturn, right, Yeah, exactly. This is not a
7:16
Speaker 1: small thing. I think it sort of looks like a
7:18
Speaker 1: yarmu cut, a six sided yamica. Yeah, that's right, you know,
7:22
Speaker 1: like the six pointed star. Maybe Saturn is a Jewish
7:25
Speaker 1: Planet's Jewish? Yeah? Maybe? Yeah, it's the Holy Land after all.
7:30
Speaker 1: And you know, the amazing thing about this is that
7:33
Speaker 1: we've never seen anything that shape before. And when we
7:35
Speaker 1: looked all around Earth and storms on Earth, you know,
7:37
Speaker 1: they're like round usually or a round dish, right, And
7:41
Speaker 1: we looked all over the Solar System. You know, Jupiter
7:44
Speaker 1: has storms on it and they're circular or they're like
7:46
Speaker 1: a little oblong or whatever. We've never seen something on
7:50
Speaker 1: another planet that's a geometrical shape. The only things we've
7:53
Speaker 1: ever seen that are hexagonal are here on Earth and
7:55
Speaker 1: their civilization, you know, unless you're talking about like bees,
7:58
Speaker 1: honeycombs and stuff, and that's still that's proof of life.
8:01
Speaker 1: It's a pretty suspicious thing, right, isn't it. It's not
8:04
Speaker 1: round like or a blob. It's it's like it looks
8:07
Speaker 1: like it has six sides to it. Yeah, it looks constructed.
8:10
Speaker 1: And so immediately your brain goes to like, oh my god,
8:13
Speaker 1: are there aliens on Saturn? Right? And then you think, okay,
8:16
Speaker 1: I have to come up with some other explanation, because
8:18
Speaker 1: you know, the alien explanation wild antilizing, and while I
8:21
Speaker 1: always want to go there because I'm desperate to meet
8:23
Speaker 1: these aliens, it's got to be low on the list. Right.
8:26
Speaker 1: If there were aliens on Saturn, they were capable of
8:28
Speaker 1: doing this kind of thing, we probably would have heard
8:30
Speaker 1: from them before now. So you've got to think of
8:32
Speaker 1: some other explanation for it. But we'll dig into that. Well,
8:36
Speaker 1: this is a perfect point to take a break, Daniel.
8:51
Speaker 1: I feel like, if you ever meet aliens or gonna
8:53
Speaker 1: be like the super eager person that really wants to,
8:56
Speaker 1: I'm totally gonna fanboy out about the one thing. Yeah, family,
9:01
Speaker 1: you're like, how did you get here? I love your work,
9:04
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm so impressed. No, I'm gonna be shameless,
9:09
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. I will fanboard those alien physicists for sure. Well,
9:13
Speaker 1: I definitely want their autograph as well. But before we
9:15
Speaker 1: dig into it, I thought, what do people know about it?
9:18
Speaker 1: Do people even know that this is a thing? Um?
9:21
Speaker 1: So I ran around campus that you see Irvine, and
9:23
Speaker 1: I asked folks if they knew that Saturn had a
9:25
Speaker 1: hexagon on it. Here's what people had to say, did
9:27
Speaker 1: you know that Saturn has a storm on it that's
9:30
Speaker 1: almost a perfect hexagon. No, I did not. Do you
9:33
Speaker 1: have any explanation for that? Does that seem natural to you?
9:36
Speaker 1: Definitely not natural? I mean it is natural, but it
9:39
Speaker 1: doesn't sound natural. I'm not sure because like there's things
9:44
Speaker 1: in nature that are like hexagons, right, like honeycombs, like
9:47
Speaker 1: can be artificial, artificial. So you think, like Aliens made
9:53
Speaker 1: a storm on Saturn? What do you think? I think
9:55
Speaker 1: Aliens is a stretch, but maybe I don't know. I
9:58
Speaker 1: feel like it could be natural since we've never really
10:02
Speaker 1: explored I'm not sure, but maybe exists. Okay, So you
10:05
Speaker 1: don't think it's Aliens. Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah,
10:09
Speaker 1: because I feel like there's different types, like gravity on
10:12
Speaker 1: Earth is different than any other planet. I really thought
10:16
Speaker 1: of that. I feel like that might be an artificial
10:20
Speaker 1: thing based on precedence on Earth, so most things are circular,
10:24
Speaker 1: so something that would be hexagonal would suggest that there's
10:27
Speaker 1: many fronts converging on one one site to control the flow.
10:32
Speaker 1: I can't believe that it would be natural. And the
10:35
Speaker 1: thing that I think of is, uh, the organization of
10:40
Speaker 1: spatial representation in the end torontal cortex of the mammalian
10:45
Speaker 1: brain the grid cells. Most people say no, but then
10:48
Speaker 1: you actually showed them a picture of it, right, that's right.
10:50
Speaker 1: I showed them a picture and then I said, so
10:52
Speaker 1: what do you think does this seem like something that
10:54
Speaker 1: could be, you know, naturally occurring or is it evidence
10:58
Speaker 1: of aliens? Does it look artificial? So that's that was
11:00
Speaker 1: maybe the more interesting question. And you know, some people
11:02
Speaker 1: were like, well, it's definitely not natural. Well it doesn't
11:04
Speaker 1: sound natural. I mean, how could that be possible? A
11:06
Speaker 1: lot of people went straight to aliens though, you know,
11:09
Speaker 1: some people had some ideas. What kinds of ideas did
11:12
Speaker 1: people have? Well a lot of people thought, you know,
11:14
Speaker 1: artificial though maybe I was planning that idea in their heads,
11:17
Speaker 1: you never know. Um, But some people pointed out, you know,
11:20
Speaker 1: like bees and honeycombs, that there are some things in
11:23
Speaker 1: nature that are naturally hexagonal. But those things, again, that's life, right,
11:28
Speaker 1: They're not inorganic things you find that are hexagonal. And
11:31
Speaker 1: I thought somebody who was going to say, well, you know,
11:33
Speaker 1: maybe crystals, right, because you can get naturally forming crystals
11:36
Speaker 1: that are squares or totally geometric shapes, though certainly not
11:40
Speaker 1: the size of this thing on Saturn. Well, we haven't
11:42
Speaker 1: seen one before. And anyway, this is a cloud pattern, right,
11:46
Speaker 1: not not a crystal. So you do see some hexagons
11:49
Speaker 1: in nature sometimes, Okay, it's not kind of like a
11:52
Speaker 1: fractals thing, Like maybe there's something small hexagonal that comes
11:56
Speaker 1: out as a huge hexagonal storm. That would be awesome. Mean,
12:00
Speaker 1: if there's some amazing crystal at the center of this
12:02
Speaker 1: storm that's shaping the whole thing, I love it. Let's
12:06
Speaker 1: go to Saturn and figure it out. I'm gonna drop
12:09
Speaker 1: you into the center of that storm to retrieve that crystal.
12:11
Speaker 1: That sounds like a great movie, doesn't it. Saturn's hexagon.
12:14
Speaker 1: Retrieving Saturny's the race for Saturn's hexagon. So let's let's
12:18
Speaker 1: dig into it. Then let's talk about what we do
12:20
Speaker 1: know and don't know about this weird, almost artificial looking
12:25
Speaker 1: feature on Saturday. I think the most important thing to
12:28
Speaker 1: understand is the scale of this thing. This is not
12:31
Speaker 1: like a hexagon the size of a school bus or
12:34
Speaker 1: even a small town, or even like you know, North America,
12:38
Speaker 1: or even the Earth. Okay, each side of this hexagon
12:42
Speaker 1: is the size of the Earth, which makes the whole thing.
12:46
Speaker 1: It's twenty thousand miles wide. So imagine a storm that
12:50
Speaker 1: was in the shape of a hexagon, and each side
12:53
Speaker 1: of that storm is bigger than the Earth. It's unbelievable.
12:56
Speaker 1: It's bigger than the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. So
12:59
Speaker 1: it's a giant storm. And for a whole length of
13:02
Speaker 1: the of an Earth, it's it has a straight edge, yeah,
13:05
Speaker 1: and then it bends right. The straight edge is weird,
13:08
Speaker 1: and then it bends. It bends six degrees and then
13:10
Speaker 1: it goes straight again for another length of the Earth,
13:14
Speaker 1: and and it does at six times. And for people
13:16
Speaker 1: who aren't familiar with Saturn, remember Saturn is a gas planet,
13:19
Speaker 1: which means that the outer layers of Saturn are just
13:21
Speaker 1: this hot, dense gas. Right, It's not like there's an
13:24
Speaker 1: atmosphere above a rocky surface. There's something very dense in
13:27
Speaker 1: the core. But basically Saturn is just a big ball
13:30
Speaker 1: of gas and it gets denser and denser as you go.
13:32
Speaker 1: And we can dig into the structure of Saturn in
13:34
Speaker 1: a in another episode. But what we're looking at is
13:36
Speaker 1: basically clouds on Saturn and they rotate, you know, they
13:39
Speaker 1: move around Saturn, etcetera, etcetera. Um, so we're looking at
13:43
Speaker 1: this cloud patterns. But the interesting thing about this hexagon
13:47
Speaker 1: is that it doesn't rotate with respect to Saturn like
13:49
Speaker 1: it moves with Saturn, and it seems like it's sort
13:52
Speaker 1: of fixed to Saturn. That is, it rotates the same
13:56
Speaker 1: rate as the rest of the planet, whereas some of
13:58
Speaker 1: the cloud bands below it and on Jupiter they can
14:01
Speaker 1: rotate faster or slower. Yeah. Well, I think one thing
14:03
Speaker 1: we should mention is that they might help people grasp
14:07
Speaker 1: this is that the storm is kind of centered around
14:10
Speaker 1: the north pole of Saturn. Right, that's right. It's like
14:12
Speaker 1: a hat on Saturn. Yeah, exactly, And there isn't one
14:15
Speaker 1: on the south pole, right, There's only one on the
14:17
Speaker 1: north pole. And so that might explain a little bit
14:19
Speaker 1: why it's so symmetrical, Right, It's it's sort of like
14:22
Speaker 1: it's it's centered around the whole spinning of the planet. Yeah,
14:25
Speaker 1: that might be the one thing about it that makes
14:27
Speaker 1: any sense, Right, that the center of the hexagon is
14:30
Speaker 1: the north pole of Saturn. It would be even weirder
14:32
Speaker 1: if it was like offset somehow. Do you think maybe
14:35
Speaker 1: it's like Saturn and Jupiter having a little competition, you know,
14:38
Speaker 1: Jupiter is like, hey, look I got a red tattoo,
14:40
Speaker 1: and Santa's like, oh, yeah, well I got a little
14:43
Speaker 1: blue hexagon. That's definitely the most likely explanation for sure. Yeah,
14:47
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm just wondering what the Jupiter is going
14:48
Speaker 1: to come up with. The one up Saturn is hexagon, right,
14:51
Speaker 1: another eye, Jupiter did absorb a comet that was pretty spectacular.
14:55
Speaker 1: So it's huge, this storm. And so what makes it
14:58
Speaker 1: a storm as opposed to the whole planet, which is
15:00
Speaker 1: sort of like a giant cloud. Yeah, that's a great question.
15:03
Speaker 1: What makes this storm? I think the whole planet is
15:05
Speaker 1: basically a storm, you know, and this is just one
15:07
Speaker 1: part of it. Um. These clouds are moving at pretty
15:09
Speaker 1: high speed, and so I guess that's what you would
15:12
Speaker 1: call a storm. Um. And that's fascinating also because you know,
15:15
Speaker 1: we see these things on gas giants, these persistent patterns
15:19
Speaker 1: of clouds we call them storms. But here on Earth
15:22
Speaker 1: storms don't last years or decades or centuries. Right. The
15:26
Speaker 1: great red spot in Jupiter is like at least a
15:28
Speaker 1: century old. This thing on Saturn, we have no idea
15:30
Speaker 1: how long it's been there. We saw it first in
15:33
Speaker 1: one but on Earth, like I looked it up the
15:36
Speaker 1: longest recorded storm ever on Earth was like thirty one days.
15:40
Speaker 1: So there's something that's like stable and weird about these
15:43
Speaker 1: cloud patterns on the gas giants that just doesn't happen
15:46
Speaker 1: here on Earth. It might just be kind of a
15:48
Speaker 1: skill thing, right, I mean, Jupiter and Saturn are so
15:50
Speaker 1: much bigger than the Earth. Yeah, that certainly could be it.
15:53
Speaker 1: And that's why I think it's so fascinating to look
15:55
Speaker 1: at the atmospheres of other planets because we never see
15:58
Speaker 1: that kind of thing here on Earth because the particular
16:00
Speaker 1: their details of Earth. As you say, it's a particular size,
16:03
Speaker 1: and so we don't get to see like what weird
16:04
Speaker 1: effects only happen when you have a planet that's like
16:07
Speaker 1: a thousand times bigger, and that's why it's so fascinating.
16:10
Speaker 1: But you know, you look at it and then you
16:12
Speaker 1: have to ask the question, like, how is it possible?
16:14
Speaker 1: What's the physics there? Can we understand it? We certainly
16:17
Speaker 1: didn't predict it. Nobody before we saw it said I
16:19
Speaker 1: call out that there's going to be a hexagon on
16:21
Speaker 1: top of Saturn. Wow, that would have been impressive. Nobody
16:24
Speaker 1: predicted it. But in theory it should be explainable. Right,
16:27
Speaker 1: everything we see out there in the universe should have
16:30
Speaker 1: a natural physical explanation. Then the game is, can we
16:34
Speaker 1: put together a story that tells us why that happens
16:37
Speaker 1: there and why it doesn't happen anywhere else? Right, And
16:40
Speaker 1: the weird thing is that it's sort of a different
16:41
Speaker 1: color than the rest of the planet. Right, It's almost
16:43
Speaker 1: like the whole planet is gas and clouds, but there's
16:46
Speaker 1: this one group of clouds. It's a different color, and
16:50
Speaker 1: it's in the shape of a hexagon. Yeah, what color
16:52
Speaker 1: would you say it is? I think it's sort of
16:54
Speaker 1: blue green? Yeah, I would agree. I think the aliens
16:57
Speaker 1: have great taste, better than the jew Jupiterranyan aliens, whatever
17:02
Speaker 1: you can say that Jovian sorry, Jovian aliens. Yeah, yeah, no,
17:06
Speaker 1: it's it's a pretty pretty color. As far as we
17:08
Speaker 1: know from sort of symbol probes that we've done, it
17:11
Speaker 1: goes about sixty miles deep, right, so it's not just
17:14
Speaker 1: on the very top of the cloud layers. It's really
17:16
Speaker 1: in there. And more recently they did a fly by
17:19
Speaker 1: and um and they found something really fascinating that the
17:22
Speaker 1: clouds above this, uh, this hexagon, so sort of in
17:26
Speaker 1: the very center and above it there's another hexagon. It's
17:29
Speaker 1: like a vortex in the very high atmosphere above it,
17:33
Speaker 1: not in the center of the hexagon. There's the vortex
17:35
Speaker 1: there as well, but well above the hexagon there's another
17:38
Speaker 1: vortex and that one is also hexagon shape. Wow, and
17:41
Speaker 1: it's centered. I mean it's in the north pole of
17:43
Speaker 1: the planet as well. Yeah, it's sort of above the
17:45
Speaker 1: north pole. It's like as if, you know, you found
17:48
Speaker 1: some weird hexagonal ocean currents in the north pole of Earth,
17:53
Speaker 1: and then above it you found hexagonal clouds or something.
17:55
Speaker 1: There's two layers to this hexagon, and this, the second part,
17:58
Speaker 1: was only recently discovered. So that's pretty wild to have
18:01
Speaker 1: such a huge thing, such a huge storm, and have
18:06
Speaker 1: it be a very specific shape. Yeah. I think, um,
18:08
Speaker 1: the fact that there are two hexagons totally supports your
18:11
Speaker 1: massive glowing hexagon alien crystal on the top of Saturn. Well,
18:16
Speaker 1: let's get into that. Let's get into what scientists think
18:19
Speaker 1: might be causing this feature in our solar system and
18:23
Speaker 1: what we don't know about it. But first let's take
18:25
Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, we're talking about Saturn's hexagon,
18:42
Speaker 1: and so this was I was impressed by this. This
18:44
Speaker 1: was only recently discovered, right Daniel in Yeah, voyager flu
18:48
Speaker 1: by Saturn and you know took some of the first
18:51
Speaker 1: close up pictures. And I would have loved to have
18:54
Speaker 1: been in the control room when that first picture got downloaded.
18:57
Speaker 1: You know, this is one and this is pictures some voyager,
19:00
Speaker 1: So it was sort of like downloading pictures from the internet,
19:02
Speaker 1: you know twenty years ago. You get like a line
19:05
Speaker 1: at a time, you're like waiting for it to come across,
19:08
Speaker 1: and it must have been like slowly revealed. And what's
19:10
Speaker 1: it like to be in the control room when such
19:12
Speaker 1: a bizarre thing comes onto your screen for the first
19:15
Speaker 1: time ever? Um, it must have been a wonderful moment. Yeah,
19:19
Speaker 1: do you think they were They were going like, oh
19:21
Speaker 1: my god, Alien. I think they're probably finding the grad
19:24
Speaker 1: students to me like, this is not an appropriate prank
19:26
Speaker 1: to play. Okay. I know you think this is funny,
19:28
Speaker 1: but making a fake hexagon in the data is not okay. Um,
19:32
Speaker 1: they must have really doubted their results for the first
19:34
Speaker 1: a few minutes because it's just crazy. So before we
19:37
Speaker 1: couldn't see it. Before we even with our telescopes, we
19:41
Speaker 1: couldn't make out this hexagon. That's right. Yeah, we just
19:43
Speaker 1: didn't have close up enough pictures of Saturn to see
19:46
Speaker 1: this thing. And also it's on the north pole, so
19:48
Speaker 1: it's harder to see from our angle. It's easier to
19:51
Speaker 1: see from above, right, And so what you need is
19:53
Speaker 1: a satellite, you know, to fly by Saturn and to
19:55
Speaker 1: see it. And Saturn of course a gorgeous planet. Anyway,
19:58
Speaker 1: you want closer pictures of the ings and the clouds
20:00
Speaker 1: an incredible thing. Um, but then this hexagon is just
20:04
Speaker 1: so baffling. Well, it seems that Saturn is definitely winning
20:07
Speaker 1: the one upmanship with the Jupiter. I mean, it's got
20:10
Speaker 1: the rings, got the hexagon. Don't let the Jovians hear
20:13
Speaker 1: you say that, man. So, so let's get into what
20:17
Speaker 1: might be causing this weird hexagonal pattern in Saturn. Right,
20:22
Speaker 1: If it's not aliens, what could it possibly be. Yeah, so, um,
20:26
Speaker 1: here's my list of possible explanations. One aliens, that's the
20:32
Speaker 1: whole list. Is this in an order of preference or
20:36
Speaker 1: or a wish fulfillment, that's the whole list. Of the
20:39
Speaker 1: order doesn't matter. Um, we have no other consensus explanation.
20:44
Speaker 1: I mean, they're really just there's nobody who knows what
20:47
Speaker 1: could be making this thing. There are some folks who
20:49
Speaker 1: have done some some studies to say, maybe it's some
20:53
Speaker 1: weird thing with fluid hydrodynamics and cloud shapes and all
20:56
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff interacting with like magnetic fields and and
21:00
Speaker 1: all sorts of other stuff. But nobody can reproduce this.
21:03
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's a something that needs to be
21:05
Speaker 1: that size, which is why you don't see it on earth,
21:07
Speaker 1: then of course you're not gonna be able to make
21:08
Speaker 1: it in the lab. And there are some people who
21:11
Speaker 1: have done some stuff, like they put liquid in a
21:13
Speaker 1: vat and they spin it and they try to see,
21:15
Speaker 1: can we see any weird shapes in the spinning liquid
21:18
Speaker 1: and we make stables shapes and the spinning liquid or
21:21
Speaker 1: spinning gas, and you know, they see some things, but
21:24
Speaker 1: nobody is really convinced by it. So what do you mean,
21:26
Speaker 1: like not even you can't even simulate this pattern. There's
21:30
Speaker 1: no explanation in the sense that we have no experiments
21:32
Speaker 1: they can reproduce it, and not even simulations that can
21:35
Speaker 1: that can construct this. And you know those simulations are
21:37
Speaker 1: not easy to do, right. You need a vast, vast
21:40
Speaker 1: system you're simulating lots and lots of particles, um, so
21:44
Speaker 1: it would be a lot of computation. There might be
21:46
Speaker 1: some really clever ways to sort of model the whole system.
21:49
Speaker 1: But you're looking for this this thing to emerge, right,
21:52
Speaker 1: You can't like put the hexagon into your calculations. You
21:55
Speaker 1: want the hexagon to emerge naturally to show how it
21:58
Speaker 1: can be produced, So you have to model it from
22:00
Speaker 1: sort of a low level, like model all the particles
22:03
Speaker 1: bouncing around and showed that this comes out. And that's
22:05
Speaker 1: pretty tough. Couldn't you assume the hexagonal shape and then
22:09
Speaker 1: kind of try to guess what kinds of forces or
22:12
Speaker 1: processes you would need to get that shape. Yeah, and
22:15
Speaker 1: people have thought about that, you know, like could there
22:17
Speaker 1: be maybe vortices on the outside of it, Like imagine
22:20
Speaker 1: a circle, and then if you happen to have six
22:23
Speaker 1: regularly spaced vortices or clouds on the outside of it
22:27
Speaker 1: that are sort of drawn towards the north pole, they
22:29
Speaker 1: might be exerting pressure on those sides and bending them
22:33
Speaker 1: from a circle into sort of straighter lines. That's one
22:35
Speaker 1: sort of idea, but there's there's no real support for that,
22:38
Speaker 1: Like nobody has shown that that works in simulation. I
22:41
Speaker 1: think it must be on a list of you know,
22:43
Speaker 1: astrophysics projects. People are like, well, somebody's got to explain that,
22:46
Speaker 1: but nobody knows how to get started, so we just
22:48
Speaker 1: sort of keep it on the list of big questions
22:51
Speaker 1: until somebody comes along with a good idea and it's
22:53
Speaker 1: been defers like, you do it, no, you do it,
22:55
Speaker 1: I don't want to do it. But there are a
22:57
Speaker 1: lot of great stories like that in science, or there's
22:59
Speaker 1: sort an open puzzle for decades and nobody really knows
23:02
Speaker 1: how to approach, and then somebody finally comes along and says, okay,
23:05
Speaker 1: I'm making that my PhD topic, and they dive in
23:08
Speaker 1: and sometimes they figure it out, and those that's wonderful.
23:11
Speaker 1: You know, that's wonderful. I'm glad that we have these
23:13
Speaker 1: big hanging questions out there for people to dive into.
23:16
Speaker 1: I don't want people to think that most of the
23:18
Speaker 1: universe is figured out or explained or theren't. They aren't immediate,
23:22
Speaker 1: tangible questions to be answered. So this is a pretty
23:24
Speaker 1: big one. So there could be somebody listening to us
23:27
Speaker 1: right now thinking, hey, maybe I'll be the one to
23:30
Speaker 1: crack this mystery. Yeah, and it could be that somebody
23:32
Speaker 1: listening to this right now is the person that cracks
23:34
Speaker 1: this mystery. And when you figure it out and you
23:37
Speaker 1: discover the aliens, hey mention my name to them. I
23:40
Speaker 1: know this guy who's a huge fan. I did a
23:43
Speaker 1: bunch of digging to try to figure out what do
23:45
Speaker 1: people think about hexagon? Like what do the experts think
23:47
Speaker 1: about it? There really isn't a lot out there, and
23:50
Speaker 1: so because it's a pretty third of thin amount of
23:52
Speaker 1: stuff to read, you end up pretty quickly out in
23:54
Speaker 1: the weeds. And I watched a lot of videos of
23:57
Speaker 1: people analyzing this picture and basically concluding that they were aliens.
24:00
Speaker 1: That's why you were telling me you were looking at
24:03
Speaker 1: this um really reputable academic source YouTube, that's right. On YouTube,
24:09
Speaker 1: you can find lots of videos of people pouring over
24:12
Speaker 1: this pictures of the hexagon, being like, look, this is
24:14
Speaker 1: a city. See here you can see a dome, and
24:16
Speaker 1: this must be a road and whatever. Um, A lot
24:18
Speaker 1: of people are convinced that there's it's a huge alien
24:21
Speaker 1: megastructure and that NASA is somehow covering it up. Well,
24:24
Speaker 1: what are they seeing in the pattern that maybe scientists
24:27
Speaker 1: are not, or they think that scientists are not. I
24:30
Speaker 1: don't know what they're seeing because I looked through these
24:31
Speaker 1: patterns also, and it just looks like clouds to me. Um.
24:34
Speaker 1: I think they must have been smoking some pretty good
24:36
Speaker 1: banana peals to make those conclusions. You know, it's sort
24:39
Speaker 1: of like a roor shock test, like you know, you
24:41
Speaker 1: see what you want to see. Use zooming on those
24:43
Speaker 1: clouds and the inside of the this is in the
24:45
Speaker 1: inside of the hexagon. Zoom in on those clouds and
24:48
Speaker 1: you can see whatever you want. But it really is weird, right,
24:54
Speaker 1: Like it it's weird for anything natural to be just
24:57
Speaker 1: going a straight line like that and then take regular
25:00
Speaker 1: turns in one direction. Yeah, exactly, it's really weird. I
25:04
Speaker 1: think that's the weirdest part for me. Are those turns?
25:06
Speaker 1: You know, how does that happen? How does like a
25:08
Speaker 1: huge high speed band of clouds bend like that? You know,
25:13
Speaker 1: it's usually it's if it encounters an obstacle or something, um,
25:17
Speaker 1: which would suggest you know, there's something underneath it that's
25:20
Speaker 1: that's causing it. Uh, we really don't know. I was
25:22
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know, temperature gradients, like maybe the reason
25:26
Speaker 1: there are large storms on gas giants is because they're
25:31
Speaker 1: sort of further out from the Sun, which makes the
25:34
Speaker 1: tops of them cold. Right, the outer atmosphere is colder
25:37
Speaker 1: because it's further from the Sun, but then the interior
25:39
Speaker 1: is very hot. So maybe they're just like larger temperature gradients.
25:43
Speaker 1: Like the difference between the cloud tops and the center
25:45
Speaker 1: is huge, and that's that's the kind of stuff that
25:47
Speaker 1: causes weather here on Earth, right, cold air meeting hot air. Yeah,
25:50
Speaker 1: there's definitely something strange about these gas giants, right, like
25:53
Speaker 1: Saturn and Jupiter that are basically just giant balls of
25:56
Speaker 1: gas that there's a lot of like physics that we
25:59
Speaker 1: don't really we understand when you when you have that
26:02
Speaker 1: munch of gas, that's right, you don't know. There's a
26:06
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of good jokes that that I'm
26:08
Speaker 1: just going to step right around because this is a
26:10
Speaker 1: family friendly episode, Um, but exactly, and that's why we
26:14
Speaker 1: want to study it. You know, we are looking at
26:16
Speaker 1: planets outside our Solar system, and we're just soon going
26:19
Speaker 1: to be getting images of those for the first time,
26:21
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be seeing even stranger weather patterns, I hope,
26:24
Speaker 1: and one day we'll be we'll be looking at those
26:26
Speaker 1: to decide where should we go? Where should humanities next
26:30
Speaker 1: home be? And we want to pick a place that's
26:32
Speaker 1: nice to live on, right, we want to find another
26:34
Speaker 1: key West. And so it's good to get experienced just
26:37
Speaker 1: in our neighborhood looking at planets and saying do we
26:39
Speaker 1: understand this weather? Can? We had to figure this out.
26:42
Speaker 1: The more we understand about exoplanet atmospheres, the better will
26:45
Speaker 1: be in choosing a place for humanity to survive. So
26:48
Speaker 1: it's kind of like Stonehenge in a way, right, Like
26:50
Speaker 1: it's like it's like the Stonehenge of Saturn. It's like
26:53
Speaker 1: it's there. It's obviously shouldn't be there, and it's weird
26:56
Speaker 1: that it's there, but there's no real physical explanation for
27:00
Speaker 1: why it's there. Yeah, that's a good analogy. It's like
27:03
Speaker 1: a massive Saturnian Stonehenge. So basically the Irish did it.
27:10
Speaker 1: And I think, um, a lot of people thought Stonehee
27:12
Speaker 1: was also built by aliens, didn't they? Oh, well maybe
27:15
Speaker 1: it's all related Stonehenge a hexagon. Oh my god, we
27:19
Speaker 1: cracked the code. Did we just solve two mysteries? We
27:23
Speaker 1: just cracked the code? All right? This is turning into
27:26
Speaker 1: a Dan Brown novel. So yeah, so there are interesting
27:29
Speaker 1: and amazing mysteries out there, even in our solar system
27:32
Speaker 1: that even physicists are flabbergasted about gassing their flabbers flabberries
27:38
Speaker 1: are gasting. And so it's right there for you guys,
27:41
Speaker 1: out there, for future scientists to try to figure it out.
27:45
Speaker 1: That's right. So next time you're outside in the night sky,
27:47
Speaker 1: look up and remember there's weird stuff going on really
27:51
Speaker 1: far away, but also right here close to home. They're
27:54
Speaker 1: big mysteries and little mysteries and six sided mysteries for
27:57
Speaker 1: you to solve. Enjoy the view and all of some
28:00
Speaker 1: of those mysteries for us, because I am dying to
28:02
Speaker 1: know what's going on. Daniel is dying to meet some
28:06
Speaker 1: that's right. That's right, and trade all of your lives
28:08
Speaker 1: for some secrets of the universe. Alright, Well, on that note,
28:14
Speaker 1: see you next time. Thanks for tuning in. If you
28:24
Speaker 1: still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
28:27
Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
28:30
Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
28:33
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at
28:37
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening
28:40
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
28:43
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio from More podcast from
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